


Owlship Playset Not Included

by Sandoz (Sandoz_Iscariot17)



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Action Figures, Action/Adventure, Christmas, Friendship, Humor, M/M, New York City, Toys, Trains, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-24
Updated: 2011-09-24
Packaged: 2017-10-24 00:02:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/256575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandoz_Iscariot17/pseuds/Sandoz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan loves the new line of Watchmen action figures. Rorschach does not. Movieverse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Owlship Playset Not Included

**Author's Note:**

> Watchmen belongs to Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and DC Comics. Written for wednesday42 for wm_secretsanta 2009.

I.

It was December 22nd, 1974, and Dan Dreiberg found himself inside the FAO Schwartz on Fifth Avenue, staring at a life-size cardboard standup of Ozymandias. Arms folded heroically over his chest, the masked standup smiled in the middle of the toy aisle in a way that made Dan vaguely want to punch it.

The concept of ‘Christmas cheer’ hadn’t really been made with Dan in mind, but at least he wasn’t as short-fused as the parents jostling each other in the crowded store in search of last minute gifts. The popular toy that season was a stuffed Bubastis with realistic, kittenish fur, but that wasn’t what Dan was there for. Leaving the Ozymandias standup behind, Dan’s eyes grew brighter at the sight of the toys down the aisle that were packaged in black and yellow. The bold WATCHMEN logos were unmistakable and pulled Dan forward like the grappling gun’s zip line.

Dan had seen only seen two episodes of the Hanna-Barbera _Watchmen_ cartoon show, on the rare Saturday mornings when he was actually awake. He hadn’t thought much of it. The animation was jerky and plain, with recycled backgrounds and scant lip movement, and the title characters were barely recognizable. The Comedian told knock-knock jokes and his guns fired handkerchiefs that said “Smile.” Silk Spectre was more interested in getting Dr. Manhattan to notice her than fighting crime, clinging to his arm whenever they were in a jam and cooing, “Oh, Jon!” Ozymandias was always the one who solved the crime at the end of the episode, making the other heroes redundant. Rorschach spoke with a thick, inexplicable Brooklyn accent and had the catchphrase “I’ll murderize da jerks!” And Nite Owl…well, Dan cringed with embarrassment and fled to the kitchen for more coffee whenever Nite Owl was onscreen.

But even if Dan had resisted the scant charms of the _Watchmen_ cartoon, he could not escape the catchy toy commercials that played well into the evening news. Watchmen toys. He was an action figure. There was no fighting the smile that spread across his face whenever he saw the boy on TV waving the brand new Owlship playset in the air and yelling “Pew! Pew!” (Even if the real Owlship had never made a sound even close to “Pew! Pew!”).

In the Christmas rush the aisle had been picked almost clean. The Dr. Manhattan, Comedian, and Ozymandias figures were all sold out, leaving only a few lonely Nite Owls, Rorschachs, and Silk Spectres. Dan made a quick reach for them, as if at any moment a greedy parent would snatch them away (and with this crowd, he was sure, it would be a battle as violent as any skirmish with Moloch). Then he picked up doubles of the figures and, juggling a boxed Owlship playset along with them, hustled in the direction of the cashier.

In his rush, the sharp corner of one of the Rorschachs’ boxes bumped into the Ozymandias standup, knocking it soundlessly to the floor.

\---

Riding the subway home with the FAO Schwartz bag in his lap, Dan’s eyes caught a very young boy playing four seats away, and he felt a warm rush of surprise when he realized the boy’s playthings were Nite Owl, Rorschach, and Ozymandias action figures.

“Kyaaaaa! Take that, bad guys!” the boy shouted, making the Ozymandias figure spin-kick the Nite Owl and Rorschach across his lap. Then for good measure his arm swept them onto the floor of the train car. Mini-Nite Owl and Rorschach lay motionless in sad plastic defeat. “Ozy wins!”

“Billy, pick those up!” his mother admonished.

Dan looked away.

\---

When Nite Owl heard Rorschach’s footsteps echoing out of the abandoned subway tunnel, he was sitting in front of his glass trophy case and holding the Archie playset up to the overhead light with what he knew was a stupid grin on his face. (It was the same grin he’d worn when he approached the friendly-looking girl behind the cash register. “Oh, how many little boys do you have?” she asked at the sight of his pile, and he’d stumbled out an embarrassed “Two.”)

The paint job wasn’t particularly detailed and it was funny to notice what the toy designers got wrong (Dan had declined Adrian’s request for the Owlship’s blueprints) but it was nonetheless thrilling to hold a miniature, mass-produced Archie in his hands. He could even open up its middle and put the Nite Owl and Rorschach figures inside.

“Hi, Rorschach,” he said to the living, full-sized Rorschach now standing at his side. He could feel the gaze following his arm as he gently moved the toy Archie through the air. His smile still fixed on his face, he turned to his partner and said, “Look at these,” with an excited, almost reverent tone.

Rorschach cocked his head to the side and took the toy from Nite Owl’s hands. He seemed to weigh it carefully, as if trying to decide if it was a paperweight or a grenade. “Have seen the real Owlship, Daniel,” he said, putting it down. “Much more impressive.”

“Thanks for the reassurance,” Nite Owl said cheekily, digging into the bright red FAO Schwartz bag at his feet. He pulled out the Nite Owl and Rorschach action figures and held back his _ta-daa_.

Rorschach was silent.

“The new Watchmen toys,” Nite Owl stated the obvious. “They just came out for Christmas.”

Rorschach snatched his action figure out of Nite Owl's hand and began to poke and pull at it, as if it were a murder suspect under a brutal interrogation. Nite Owl thought he saw facial muscles twitching under the mask. In a weird way, it almost looked like he was playing with it. (The toy only had shoulder and leg articulation. Unlike the real Rorschach, Dan thought with a flush of heat on his neck, it definitely couldn't shimmy up a drain pipe or twist a criminal's arm behind his back.)

"Hurm. Paint probably contains lead.” Rorschach popped one of the arms out of its plastic socket and then jammed it back in. "...As I thought, shoddy foreign workmanship. Really, Daniel," he said with another tilt of his head, indicating the Owlship only a few yards away, "Thought you had better taste in playthings."

Nite Owl crossed his arms over his chest and realized, not for the first time, that his partner was kind of an asshole.

"Jesus, man," he said with a shake of his head. "They're only toys."

"Made in our image without permission. Our good names are being prostituted by a fellow mask, and you find them charming?"

"Well," Nite Owl conceded, "I'm not thrilled by the idea of someone making a profit off the Nite Owl name, no." ('Not in it for the ink,' he almost said, before realizing he would be echoing his partner's words from that fateful meeting only four years ago.) "But I talked to Adrian and he assured me the proceeds from the toy line would be going to a good cause." He thought back to the phone call months earlier, before the premiere of the cartoon show, and how Adrian had politely (and as Dan imagined, smilingly) explained the complex legal loopholes and gray areas that allowed him, as the founder of the group that had been called the Watchmen, to market toys and animated programs with their images. And since the masked heroes _existed_ in a legal gray area anyway…

The Owl’s Nest was filled with a thick, tense silence. If Rorschach had any comments to make about Adrian Veidt’s idea of charity, he didn’t share them. Nite Owl looked down at the small plastic Nite Owl he still held and pinched its cloth cape between his thumb and forefinger.

“They didn’t have toys like these when we were kids,” he said. “I wonder if I would have been even more inspired to take after Hollis if I had a toy like this of him.” His mouth curved into a smile.

Rorschach took a step closer. His voice was lowered and its edge softened so lightly that only Nite Owl would have been able to notice that it had changed at all. “Only a toy, Daniel. Not the man. It can’t do what we do.”

Nite Owl laughed. “I know it’s silly.” The sensible part of his brain knew that it was an illusion, that the Watchmen cartoon had nothing to do with the real team that had imploded immediately after its formation. The toys had nothing to do with a Comedian who shot real bullets at real people, or a Nite Owl and Rorschach who stayed up till dawn beating up drug dealers and murderers. It was all a manufactured fantasy for children, pre-packaged and vacuum-sealed. But, a not very sensible part of his brain wondered, what was so wrong with that?

“Think of it as a reminder that there are people who look up to us. Kids know that we’re the good guys, we’re out there to keep them safe.” Nite Owl tried not to think of the little boy on the subway. “Hell, we’re G.I. Joe. Come on, man, you have to know what I mean. Didn’t you have a favorite toy when you were a kid?”

Rorschach’s scoff cut through the air like a kitchen knife. “No.”

It was a “no” that Nite Owl knew very well, a “no, this is not up for further discussion” no, a “no, I was never a child at all, I sprung fully formed from the head of Zeus” no. A “no” that Nite Owl didn’t have the will or the heart to argue with, because it always made him feel a little bit sorry for his partner.

“It’s nothing,” Nite Owl said, setting the Nite Owl action figure next to its Owlship playset and flashing an air-clearing smile. He adjusted his goggles and jerked a thumb towards Archie. “Playtime’s over.”

II.

"Playtime's over, King!" Nite Owl shouted as he ran down the concrete steps, the cold December wind giving way to the clogged heat of the crowded subway station.

Rorschach was close behind him. "Rats always head for holes," he rasped near his ear.

Even the most dead-eyed and desensitized of New York City residents took notice when the man in a zoot suit and a Jughead-crown leaped over the turnstile, a pair of costumed vigilantes close behind (Rorschach leaped over the bar with a slick gymnastic grace that always left Nite Owl a little stunned, not that he had the time to notice it). Panting heavily, the King of Skin shoved his way between an off-duty department store Santa Claus and a heavyset woman, sending her bag of groceries flying. Nite Owl narrowly avoided slipping on the spilled oranges and bananas. (He realized, not for the first time, that being a masked hero was kind of absurd.)

The silver, graffitti-scrawled L-train gleamed ahead, its doors open as weary commuters pushed in and out. The King of Skin knocked more people out of the way--one man yelled "Screw you too!"--and slid inside the train just as the doors slid shut with an automated _"Ding!"_

"Nite Owl!" Rorschach yelled without slowing down. "Laser!"

He was already on it, grabbing the laser pen out of his utility belt. He had time enough to yell "Everybody, back away!" and the red beam of light sliced through the doors in a clean straight line. The train picked up speed. Without a split second of hesitation Rorschach took a running leap off the platform (miraculously not losing his fedora in the process) and rolled inside the train car. Sucking in his breath, Nite Owl followed, crashing into his partner and banging his armored shoulder against a pole. The train vanished down the tunnel.

The pair staggered to their feet, Nite Owl offering Rorschach a hand up and smiling apologetically at the gap-mouthed passengers surrounding them. Parting like the Red Sea, they let Rorschach and Nite Owl by without a word (save for the man who muttered "Fairies" at their backs).

"King of Skin at least two cars ahead," Rorschach informed his partner. Nite Owl nodded grimly. The floor swayed underneath their feet. The laser pen cut through the doors separating the cars, the rhythmic rattling of the train like the beating of Nite Owl's heart. They jumped, Nite Owl in the lead. More passengers screamed and got out of their way, though one woman snapped a blurry Polaroid and cheered "Roar-Shock and Owl-Man!" as they rushed past.

 _Tourists_ , Nite Owl thought.

Then they heard more screaming. The King of Skin.

Nite Owl aimed his laser and sliced through the final doors separating them from their target. But at that last crucial moment the train shook and he lost his balance, the laser pen nearly falling out of his hand and the red beam whipping through the car in front of him and slashing a metal pole in two diagonal arcs. Nite Owl gasped and regained his balance. He felt Rorschach's hand on his back.

"Steady, Nite Owl!" he cautioned in a low rasp that was almost kind coming from him.

Nite Owl burst in through the open passageway and had less than a second to survey the scene (a wino babbling under the orange seats, a young couple clinging to each other in the corner, a terrified father-son pair) before the King of Skin whirled around and revealed the automatic pistol he'd concealed in a shoulder holster.

His cheap crown sliding down his sweat-soaked forehead, the King snarled, "I'm not going back to jail!" and opened fire. He aimed at the largest target: Nite Owl.

He ducked, shielding his face with his gauntlets. The bullets missed. But the King of Skin's bad aim was worsened by the swaying, dipping L-train, and two bullets sent round, terrifying holes through the window above the father and child. The little boy wailed as his father threw his arms around him.

Without so much as an exhale, Nite Owl launched himself in the air, covering the father and son with his large, armored body. The three bodies obscured by Nite Owl's long, swirling cape, the King of Skin fired three more bullets where Nite Owl's back should have been. His body jerked with each impact, and he heard a strangled cry that he realized was his own.

The empty chamber of the pistol clicked. The King grunted in satisfaction, his face an angry, berserk red. “How’s _that_ ruffle your feathers, Bird Bo--”

 _Crack_. And with that hard, metallic clang (like a cartoon sound effect, it was almost comically unreal) the King of Skin buckled and fell, unconscious. Rorschach towered over the heap of limbs, gloved hands clenched around the metal pole that his partner’s laser pen had cut free.

Nite Owl groaned and sat up on the balls of his feet. The King’s bullets had ripped his cape to shreds, exposing the burnished armor of his costume. He looked down at the two civilians he had shielded with his body. The man’s eyes were wide with terror and his tie was askew, but he was fine. The little boy was trembling, but his facial expression could only be described as pure awe. And in clutched in his small, sweaty hand was an Ozymandias action figure.

This was not Nite Owl’s night.

“Are you all right?” he asked, voice shaky.

“Again! Again!” the boy cried in delight, waving his arms. His father’s mouth hung open.

The L-train pulled sluggishly into its next stop. The man scooped up his happily squealing son and zoomed out as soon as the train doors opened, not sparing a “thank you” nor a backwards glance. The couple and the wino also fled, sneakers squeaking across the floor. The platform was nearly empty. Rorschach offered Nite Owl his firm, leather-encased hand and wordlessly helped him up and out of the train. He dropped the King’s body unceremoniously on a bench; his arm flopped to the floor like he was any one of the city’s lost drunks.

Nite Owl swore under his breath and leaned over a trash can. His back was on fire, throbbing with pain. He then felt hands push the tattered remains of his cape aside. The same hands then ran themselves slowly, carefully over his back, searching for blood or bullet holes. “Gentle” wasn’t the word for it, but it was comforting all the same.

Nite Owl released a breath he didn’t even know he had been holding.

“Armor stopped the bullets,” Rorschach said quietly, as if he had only begun breathing again too. “Are you all right?”

A chuckle scraped his throat; Nite Owl turned to his partner and smiled. “Yeah. Thank god for Kevlar, huh?” He raised his left fist for Rorschach to see: he was holding the Ozymandias action figure the young boy had left behind. Its arm had broken off in the skirmish. “Better than plastic.”

Rorschach made a low, humming sound that wasn’t a laugh. He placed his hand on Nite Owl’s back again, but not to check for bullet wounds.

“When I was a child,” he began slowly, and Nite Owl’s eyes widened behind his goggles as he realized what he was starting to share, “Had a Hooded Justice doll. Not manufactured. Sewed it together with pieces of old cloth, rope.”

“You sewed it, huh?” Nite Owl said, reaching out to squeeze Rorschach’s shoulder. They stood like that together for some time, until they heard the encroaching sirens of the police coming at last to collect the King of Skin.

They were gone before the next train pulled into the station.

III.

The next morning, Dan limped down the stairs to the Owl’s Nest to do some routine checkups on Archie. He noticed the FAO Schwartz bag still on the floor and the Owlship playset resting atop his trophy case. With a soft, amused expression he opened the case, shuffled the old plaques and photographs, and made room for the toys. There was Archie and Rorschach and Silk Spectre, but…Dan’s head popped up, he scanned the shelves and floor, but the Nite Owl figure was missing. Oh well, he thought. It probably got knocked under something. He’d find it. It had to be around here somewhere.

\---

In a small, dingy apartment halfway across Manhattan, the man who called himself Rorschach unbuttoned his trenchcoat and draped it over a chair. His undressed body slammed against his cot, making the springs shriek, and he allowed himself to sleep.

Across the room, a Nite Owl action figure could be seen poking out of one of the trenchcoat pockets, its small plastic arms raised in the air.


End file.
